Let’s Make Clothing! Tutorial thread. Shoes too!

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Comments

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    After the $1.99 items ... for the rest, check the bundles. Some of the best deals are the bundles which might even contain more bundles ... when they go on sale ;-)
    Normally there's a huge March Madness sale.
    It can be a good idea to do some window shopping first and plan strategies!

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Mine not to understand all it is how/why D/S works; but apparently the use of a template when creating the clothing item isn't always the best choice to make. If your "uniform" was splitting apart [like mine was and no I won't show that], try remaking the clothing item in D/S without using a template ... or depending upon the item, possibly another template [there's for a loose bodysuit and a tight bodysuit, for eg.].

    For those wishing to create some clothing morphs, one can create "little morphs" for the clothing. I'd recommend renaming the little morph's location on the Parameter Tab to reflect the name of the clothing [rather than our handles]. For the professionals and/or want/hope to become professionals, one does have to use the morph loader and learn a lot of other details which I don't normally cover.

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Genesis Basic Clothing Rig Kit is still on sale ... price seems to vary day to day with the different sales! 65% off atm.

    http://www.daz3d.com/genesis-basic-clothing-rig-kit

    I wanted to mention that there seems to be some confusion as to what the above item is for. It is not going to magically make all your clothing for you. When D/S4.0 was first released, everybody was at the learning 'how to' everything with the program. This package was produced by Bobbie25 to help people learn how to rig clothing. The donor rigs [bones] are merchant resource in that yes you can make your clothing using this product with the bones provided in the package. She also has a few video tutorials over at Youtube.com last time I checked. The included .pdf tutorial is worth reading through.

    ........................

    Convert ANY V4 Long Dress to Genesis! (TUTORIAL) by Wancow
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16879/

    .....................

    Metadata: snaggled off of one of the official pages a tidbit to be aware of:

    REBUILD THE METADATA DATABASE
    This procedures removes all the current database files and then recreates the database by re-importing. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS WILL DESTROY ANY METADATA FOR USER CREATED CONTENT. User-created files will not be deleted, but the index info for them will be deleted. They will remain in the Content Library Pane, if created there, but will not show up and will not be able to show up in the Smart Content Pane.
  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,639
    edited December 1969

    Yep, it's just a set of boning rigs. They're good rigs, though. I have products that have used them.

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    I work on the theory that whenever a program is given away free, there are undoubtedly children and beginners grabbing a copy and just wanting to get something working. It helps the attitude if one can get success at the beginning [or near the beginning] of any learning activity, that "yes you can" ... and gee, maybe that was fun. Let's try learning more.

    When I started "learning how to make morphs" with D/S4.0, there were no tutorials available and the documentation centre's page was not yet complete. So I figure out how to make something work, verified that yes this method is okay to use the only alert being that one does not manually hack files that one plans to sell. So okay. I'm not selling anything. The advanced method for morphing calls for use of the morph loader. And while I'm sure it's probably very easy to use once you've figured out how, somehow taking all those extra steps when all I wanted to do was save a morph and found I could with one step well hay! There is a simple method. You will notice that the professional products are not using this simple method and that's fine. They also have professional made metadata so theoretically one can find the products. [don't mind me, nearly died again this week and am I ever tired] So ... I can find my morphs by making "simple morphs". And I will show those that would like to know this method some of the "how to". As it's very similar to saving little morphs made for Genesis, I'm not repeating every single step.

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  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited February 2013

    This morph is rather drastic so it will appear. Remember with smoothing on the clothing, some of the morph will be ironed out.

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  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited February 2013

    Now if somebody who knows how to save the morph using the Advanced method wants to, feel free to post some images too. Thank you.

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  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Okay, as elsewhere I have mentioned that if people wish to contribute to the knowledge base here for how to make clothing "for 3D printing" [requirements are not the same as for rendering images], they may do so just to plainly state that the information is for 3D printing.

    From another thread in the forum, advice has been offered that one needs to use MeshLab [free] to convert the .obj file to .stl file.

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16552/P60/#252629

    To note though that there is to be no 3D printing of Daz's mesh until a license to do so has been procured. Said licenses are not yet in the marketplace.

    And for those interested in a license free model to dress: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15933/

  • anikadanikad Posts: 1,919
    edited December 1969
  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the HU. Price difference request input. :-)

    btw - for those new to D/S4.x there are also a lot of videos some of which deal with making clothing. Some are a little dated in that the program has been updated since the videos were first made. But there is still some good information in them.
    For eg. DAZ Studio 4 Transfer Utility shows how easily this feature works and also covers how D/S is auto-adding morphs.

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Not enough for a topic on its own. Here are a few samples from things I've encountered this week.

    Don't faint. I did try that Morph Loader Pro ... in D/S4.0. As I fail to see how this was an improvement over the Hexagon route, maybe like, if I just used it incorrectly, some kind soul might jump in and enlighten us. The images are not 'step by step' ... one shows how to change the option to get the MLP to appear on return to D/S from Hexagon. And some of the various popups that appear.

    The DSF Toolbox is great for editing safely certain headers in the files BUT unless I missed the "where to" seems to avoid the editing of pathways on the Parameters Tab.

    Have been encountering more releases amongst the freeware indicating that there are no uvmaps but we can use our shaders. And like, no, we can't. Shaders use images. Images require the uvmap. Doesn't have to be great, a basic Hexagon slap-on is better than nothing.

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  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    And a few more.

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  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,639
    edited December 1969

    Morph Loader Pro allows you to change the name of the morph and its grouping by double-clicking those things in its dialogue. This way I can offer a product with morphs divided into JCM, Fixes And Layering, and Movement and Style. This is important to me because an average large product that I do has dozens of custom morphs, and it's easier for the customer to find them under separate headings.


    You can also rename and regroup morphs with the Property Editor, is that of interest to anyone?

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Morph Loader Pro allows you to change the name of the morph and its grouping by double-clicking those things in its dialogue. This way I can offer a product with morphs divided into JCM, Fixes And Layering, and Movement and Style. This is important to me because an average large product that I do has dozens of custom morphs, and it's easier for the customer to find them under separate headings.


    You can also rename and regroup morphs with the Property Editor, is that of interest to anyone?

    Double clicking ?! [sigh, I was right-clicking and getting nowhere fast lol...]


    It would be, but nothing I was trying would enable renaming the morph. I'll go try double-clicking ...
    Silly thought, but wouldn't an option to name the morph in the first place have been a good idea?

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,639
    edited December 1969

    Morph Loader Pro allows you to change the name of the morph and its grouping by double-clicking those things in its dialogue. This way I can offer a product with morphs divided into JCM, Fixes And Layering, and Movement and Style. This is important to me because an average large product that I do has dozens of custom morphs, and it's easier for the customer to find them under separate headings.


    You can also rename and regroup morphs with the Property Editor, is that of interest to anyone?

    Double clicking ?! [sigh, I was right-clicking and getting nowhere fast lol...]


    It would be, but nothing I was trying would enable renaming the morph. I'll go try double-clicking ...
    Silly thought, but wouldn't an option to name the morph in the first place have been a good idea?

    Yep, double-click the name in MLP and it should become editable. For the morph group you must right-click, choose Create, and enter the name of the group you want, including slashes to create subgroups.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,639
    edited December 1969

    And because pics or it didn't happen ;)


    This is in DS4.5, but MLP's interface is the same between 4 and 4.5 as near as I've seen.

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  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Oh Thank You so much. I will go and try all that.

    I have a question about all these morphs for the FBMs on clothing.

    Do we have to make them all each for every clothing item or can they be dialed into the clothing while it's fitting Genesis, and saved out from there?

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,639
    edited February 2013

    Oh Thank You so much. I will go and try all that.

    I have a question about all these morphs for the FBMs on clothing.

    Do we have to make them all each for every clothing item or can they be dialed into the clothing while it's fitting Genesis, and saved out from there?

    If FBMs appear when it's fitted to Genesis but you didn't add them, that's just Autoconform doing its thing. You should not save those because it just adds unnecessarily to file size. The user's computer will do it anyway when they get the clothes, and if you're using DS4.0 you will be offering inferior generated morphs (4.5 does that a little better than 4.0 does because of changes to smoothing and collision). When you buy a Genesis clothing item from DAZ and it appears to have no FBM morphs, this is why, because the maker tested it with the generated morphs and it worked fine.


    Sometimes you won't get good results with those generated morphs. This is when you should do a custom FBM, sometimes by exporting the generated one and tweaking it, sometimes by starting from the zeroed mesh (if the generated one is just rubbish). This is true of most hip-hugging pants and literally all tops on female characters that are not plunging V-necklines or bras, unless you want the superhero boob-sock look. (This is also why most female outfits sold ARE plunging necklines or bras - not only do people think it looks sexy, but it saves doing custom FBMs.)


    I'm offering a product soon (it's out tomorrow) that improves FBM generation, but sometimes this will still be needed even with that.


    Also: if you do a custom FBM from tweaking the generated one, make sure Genesis is at 100% scale before exporting it to work with in your modeler. A lot of morphs use some kind of scaling and this will mess up your fit afterward if left on.

    Post edited by SickleYield on
  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Oh Thank You so much. I will go and try all that.

    I have a question about all these morphs for the FBMs on clothing.

    Do we have to make them all each for every clothing item or can they be dialed into the clothing while it's fitting Genesis, and saved out from there?

    If FBMs appear when it's fitted to Genesis but you didn't add them, that's just Autoconform doing its thing. You should not save those because it just adds unnecessarily to file size. The user's computer will do it anyway when they get the clothes, and if you're using DS4.0 you will be offering inferior generated morphs (4.5 does that a little better than 4.0 does because of changes to smoothing and collision). When you buy a Genesis clothing item from DAZ and it appears to have no FBM morphs, this is why, because the maker tested it with the generated morphs and it worked fine.


    Sometimes you won't get good results with those generated morphs. This is when you should do a custom FBM, sometimes by exporting the generated one and tweaking it, sometimes by starting from the zeroed mesh (if the generated one is just rubbish). This is true of most hip-hugging pants and literally all tops on female characters that are not plunging V-necklines or bras, unless you want the superhero boob-sock look. (This is also why most female outfits sold ARE plunging necklines or bras - not only do people think it looks sexy, but it saves doing custom FBMs.)


    I'm offering a product soon (it's out tomorrow) that improves FBM generation, but sometimes this will still be needed even with that.


    Also: if you do a custom FBM from tweaking the generated one, make sure Genesis is at 100% scale before exporting it to work with in your modeler. A lot of morphs use some kind of scaling and this will mess up your fit afterward if left on.

    Wonderful explanation, thank you.

    Yes that 100% is "very" important lol ...

    I've also noticed, at least with my figure necklaces, that putting them on Genesis, "then" shaping/morphing Genesis works better. They'll "grow" with Genesis. But if loaded onto a dramatically different shape, they won't, they hide inside somewhere.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,639
    edited December 1969

    If that happens they may not have fitted to the figure and picked up the morph. Are these all figures, or are some smartprops? In that case it's a parenting issue and they're not picking up the scaling (make sure Genesis is selected when you load from library).

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    If that happens they may not have fitted to the figure and picked up the morph. Are these all figures, or are some smartprops? In that case it's a parenting issue and they're not picking up the scaling (make sure Genesis is selected when you load from library).

    They are figures and I think you're right. Don't recall them mentioning about having applied the "fit to".

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,212
    edited December 1969

    Quick question. I'm working with Genesis. I created a vest for a superhero a while back, my first ever model that came out well enough to want to share.. eventually. Over time I've gotten better at using ZBrush and discovered a few automated ways to improve the mesh but it did change it up enough to where I'm basically starting over.

    So this is what I got so far. I exported out the obj from ZBrush. Imported it into DAZ Studio (by the way, the Custom import that gets it very close to being perfectly fit to Genesis base is: 2550% and I saved it as ZBrush Import.) I then repositioned it since it comes in at the floor level. Now I'm stuck. I think there is a way to export it and reimport it so it's default position is where I moved it to. Is this something I would do through the Hexagon Bridge? If so what are the settings to export back out of Hex?

    The rigging is pretty easy via the transfer utility so not so worried about that part.

    Thanks much!

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,212
    edited December 1969

    PS... really wish DAZ would implement a shrink wrap in Hexagon in the next update.

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited February 2013

    RAMWolff said:
    PS... really wish DAZ would implement a shrink wrap in Hexagon in the next update.

    ;-) and have it legal for redistribution, we all dream.

    But we can use the smoothing function to tighten our clothing ... requires a little more export/import/redo work but it can be worth the effort.

    Steps for import/export between D/S and Hexagon:


    I export Genesis out of D/S using the Poser settings of 1 unit = 8ft [24384%].
    Import Genesis into Hexagon using 1.000 m setting.

    Import your clothing .obj into Hexagon and resize/place it where you want it to fit on Genesis. [do not move Genesis]

    Delete Genesis. [do not move the clothing]
    Export out the clothing item using 1.000 m setting.

    In D/S load Genesis for real, import your clothing item using the Poser settings ... it should be landing on Genesis now. And carry on with rigging, etc.

    edit: "not" with the bridge ... the bridge IMHO is only for morphing.

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  • edited December 1969

    Hello, I am still new at this and have some questions. I hope this is the right place to post them.

    I recently bought the "Classic Bikini Tutorial" from DAZ ( saw someone on here refer it as a good tut).
    It was a very good tutorial teaching me a lot of different tools in Hex.
    The problem I am having is that it did not seem complete. He went over everything to model the clothing, UV map and fit it onto Genesis.
    But I am lost on a few parts.
    What do you do with the UV maps? (he just stacked them on top of each other and said he would get back to that later...is that another tut I have to buy?)

    How do you save the clothing items to use in DAZ? Do you have to import the OBJ in everytime you want to use them? Then go through the whole transfer utility each time?

    I am just getting back into using DAZ and Hex. I used to "play" with them a few years ago. Spent a lot of money to buy stuff for V4. Now that I am getting back into it. I can not find any tuts on creating for V4...everyone is using this Genesis (which I don't care for...yet)
    What happened to all of the tutorials on making clothes for V4?...all of my links are dead...and all of the products I have for V4 don't work the best on Genesis.

    Thanks for all of the useful info in this thread.....I learned quite a bit just reading through...too many pages to read all right now LOL.

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,212
    edited December 1969

    Hi Patience,

    Thanks for the work flow. Not mine though sorry to say. I did figure it all out though so in case anyone is using ZBrush - Hex - Genesis - DAZ Studio here we go.

    Finish your detailing in ZB, save as an OBJ. Switch over to DS. Load up Genesis, keep in T formation. Leave shape at default. Then File>Import>Obj. When the import dialog comes up in the percentage box type in 2550, the area above that will switch to "Custom" and the Save Preset button will light up. Name that ZBrush Native Import since that seems to bring it in at Genesis sized. It will be on the floor so use the translation tool to move it up and position it in place. I used the Scale dials to fix any poking out. Then went to the Edit tools found in the fly out menu in the Scene tab. I converted to Triax weight mapping and then use the Transfer tool to conform it to Genesis:

    Source: Genesis | Choose "Current" in the "Item Shape" drop down
    Target: Item to be transferred | Leave "Item Shape" at "Default"
    Projection Template: I chose Shirt>Tight since it was a vest.
    Click "Show Options" and leave it all as it is but check off the "Reverse Source Shape from Target" option. The reason why I said to choose "Current" for Genesis is that this box is un-selectable unless you have SOMETHING selected in the Source "Item Shape" drop down.

    Run the script and it's done. Now I'm trying to figure out how to freeze the shoulder bones in the vest since when Genesis puts it's arms up or down the tips of the vest follow along and it looks kinda bad. Any solutions to this area you can provide me with??

    Thanks!

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  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,639
    edited December 1969

    They're being affected by the shoulder bones. Paint them 100% to the collars with the weight map brush on the Z rotate map?

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,212
    edited December 1969

    Never used the weight map brush. Momma, I'm a-scared! :P

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,639
    edited December 1969

    1. Click the right collar of your item in scene tab. Hide Genesis to make sure you don't accidentally paint it instead.
    2. Click the weight map brush. It looks like a paint brush.
    3. Set up a Tool tab from Window-Panes(tabs).
    4. Now you can look at the tool tab and see the x, y and z rotation maps for the collarbone you selected.
    5. Click on the Z map. Paint on the mesh until the pink areas are red, and your poky shoulder thing stands up the way it should. You can paint with the arms of Genesis down just fine; it's a very flexible system that way.
    6. If necessary, delete the shoulder bones (will this be sleeveless?). You do this by selecting them in scene tab, then clicking the bone tool, which looks like a bone with a bandaid over it. Right-click and choose delete bone for each shoulder.

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,212
    edited December 1969

    Thanks hon. I tried deleting the shoulder bones but then when posing the figure the vest sort of crumples and falls out of place. Once the figure is posed it jumps back in to place. Not what I'm after. Luckily I had my work saved to a file so I just reloaded. I'll give this a try. Thanks so much!

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